The hits keep coming from libtalker Ed Schultz, who’s kicking off the new year on a roll.

First week into 2013, Schultz insisted that Bill Clinton was never tried in the Senate after he was impeached by the House. Schultz followed with the laughable claim that gun laws in Chicago, a city with some of the nation’s toughest restrictions on firearms, “don’t even exist.

Schultz is tripling down on his ignorance, making an egregiously false claim on his radio show yesterday while talking about whether schools should allow teachers to arm themselves (h/t for embedded audio clip, Brian Maloney at mrctv.org) –

“Would it be a deterrent if, you know, say perpetrators know that there’s guns in the schools? How do we know they wouldn’t view that as a challenge? I mean, we got a goofy world out there. I’m just not convinced that packing a small firearm is the best defense or certainly not the best defense. You know, you want to make the best defense? Make the school a damn fortress. I mean, you could do that, I mean but, is that reasonable? Is that the right thing to do? Is it necessary? And so I’m just, is it nec-, haven’t we had enough school shootings where this is necessary?We’ve never had a civilian stop a shooting.”

In response to last week’s massacre in Connecticut, Mother Jones has put together a “study” on mass shootings that makes a pretty bold claim:

In the wake of the slaughters this summer at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.

There are a couple of major problems here with arguing that armed civilians don’t stop mass shootings. One is that when armed civilians are present, they often stop mass shootings before they can become mass shootings. One of the criteria Mother Jones used to define mass shootings is that “the shooter took the lives of at least four people.” So then, consider the following:

– Appalachian School of Law, 2002: Crazed immigrant shoots the dean and a professor, then begins shooting students; as he goes for more ammunition, two armed students point their guns at him, allowing a third to tackle him. Total dead: Three.

– Santee, Calif., 2001: Student begins shooting his classmates — as well as the “trained campus supervisor”; an off-duty cop who happened to be bringing his daughter to school that day points his gun at the shooter, holding him until more police arrive. Total dead: Two.

– Pearl High School, Mississippi, 1997: After shooting several people at his high school, student heads for the junior high school; assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieves a .45 pistol from his car and points it at the gunman’s head, ending the murder spree. Total dead: Two.

– Edinboro, Pa., 1998: A student shoots up a junior high school dance being held at a restaurant; restaurant owner pulls out his shotgun and stops the gunman. Total dead: One.

These are just a few examples of mass shootings being prevented. I’m sure there are many more that meet this criteria. But, as you can see, in every incident, the would-be shooters were stopped short of killing four people because an armed civilian—or in some cases, an off duty cop—was present.

Newsbusters (link above) also points out that the Oregon mall shooting was stopped, likely in great part by an armed civilian

Back on Dec. 11, a gunman shot two people to death at a mall in Clackamas, Ore., then took his own life when he saw a 22-year-old patron with a concealed carry permit draw his weapon.

“He was working his own gun,” Nick Meli told KGW Channel 8, describing how he positioned himself behind a pillar when he heard gunfire. “He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side.”